


Watermark

by levendis



Series: Prompt Fics [4]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Anxiety Attacks, Approximately canon levels of romance, Dissociation, F/M, Gen, Schmoop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-02
Updated: 2015-04-02
Packaged: 2018-03-20 22:33:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3667710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/levendis/pseuds/levendis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Do you know what the big problem is in telling fantasy and reality apart? They're both ridiculous.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Watermark

**Author's Note:**

> For anon, who prompted: h/c Clara being understandably freaked out about sleeping/whether or not she's dreaming post 'Last Christmas'

All of time and space, and it’s hers. This ship, this impossible alien: they’re her life, again.

Take me somewhere amazing, she says. So he takes her somewhere amazing. A planet on the edge of a galaxy with a name she can’t pronounce, space-faring civilization, lizard-people with too many arms and expressive tails. Two suns and pink cotton-candy clouds, anti-grav thrusters holding up unlikely skyscrapers.

"They use favors as currency," he says. "Try to avoid buying anything, I hate owing people things."

He bounces off to meet up with an old friend. She’s invited, he says, but it’ll just be two old-timers reminiscing about the days of yore, she’d get bored. So she wanders off on her own, through the winding city streets, until she finds herself in a park. She claims a bench under the shade of a knotted, skeletal tree, broad red leaves swaying in the breeze, and she sits with her legs folded up beneath her. Watching the lizard-people skitter by, watching the shadows lengthen.

She realizes she doesn’t entirely remember how she got here. Her head feels like a balloon on a string, distant and unreal. She wraps her coat tightly around herself and waits for the Doctor to find her.

Back in the TARDIS, later, he’s buzzing with excitement and she just - stands there. Has the ship always sounded like this? Looked like this? She can’t remember. This is her life again, and the thought is so absurd she doesn’t know whether to laugh hysterically or burst into tears. She wrestles with an odd sense of déjà-vu; he does an awkward little dance that ends up with him shaking her hand firmly.

That night, she lies awake in bed, staring up at the ceiling. She falls asleep at some point, presumably.

 

* * *

 

You thought that was good, he says. I’ve got someplace even better.

It’s a time-loop, a planet stuck perpetually on a single day. Just one day, over and over and over. A short day: it’s not much of an orbit, around an angry orange sun, looming huge in the sky. 10% of the population is aware of the repetition, lives each day individually (like Bill Murray in _Groundhog Day_ , he says, deeply pleased to be able to make an Earth pop-culture reference she’d understand); the other 90% are oblivious, living the same day every day, day after day after day.

The same sunset every night. She isn’t here and this isn’t real. This isn’t _real_.

She runs. Three near-identical days in, she runs. She runs back to the TARDIS and she slams the door shut behind her and she leans heavily against the console, hands braced on the cold metal, trying to remember how to breathe.

The Doctor isn’t far behind her. “Clara! Clara, if you didn’t like that, it’s fine, we can go somewhere-” He breaks off, looks at her strangely. His ‘trying to figure out weird human emotions’ expression. “Is everything okay?”

"I’ve got a headache," she says, still short of breath. She’s not out of shape, it wasn’t the running that knocked the wind out of her, it’s just that her lungs aren’t quite working, like the air here doesn’t have enough oxygen. Her heart pumping, legs shaking.

"There’s aspirin in the medical bay if you-"

"No, Doctor, I have a _headache_.” Willing him to understand, massaging her temples. “Like, dream crab, my-brain-is-being-dissolved headache.”

"Oh," he says. "But this isn’t a dream. It’s probably just stress and overexertion. You’re not as young as you used to be, you have to make allowances for your advanced years. Happens to everyone, you shouldn’t worry about it."

"Are you sure?" she asks, the panic poking through. "I mean really sure? We could still be asleep. We could still be dying."

"I’m sure. Really sure." His expression softens, and she’s aware of that somewhere behind the haze, aware that he is sweetly and softly brushing the hair out of her eyes, putting his arms around her.

It’s just that she can’t quite shake the feeling that she’s still dreaming. That she’ll wake up somewhere with a monster draining the life from her, if she’ll wake up at all. That this isn’t happening and he isn’t here, why would he be here, when has he ever touched her like this, except in a dream?

He guides her to her bedroom and turns out the light and she falls asleep at some point, probably.

 

* * *

 

You thought that was good, he says. Well, this isn’t as good. This is actually kind of terrible. I can’t believe I’m doing this of my own free will.

"Where are we?"

"A community center. Somewhere. It’s Bingo Night." He holds the door open for her, waving her in with a flourish.

"Are there aliens here? No, no, don’t tell me - it’s robots."

"Nope. Well, I’m an alien, and you’ve spent enough time off-world to count as extraterrestrial in certain districts. But aside from us, no aliens. No robots. No sentient goo monsters or abstract creatures made out of pure maths or evil industrialists hell-bent on turning the world into one massive carpark. Just pensioners. And Bingo."

"Just Bingo," she echoes blankly. "Why are we here?"

"To play Bingo," he says, the ‘duh’ written clear on his face. "D’you know what Bingo is because I can teach-"

” _I know what Bingo is._ " The word is starting to lose all meaning.

He takes her by the elbow and guides her to an empty seat, across from an almost cartoonishly-Grandma old lady. Blue hair and chain on the glasses and a sequin cat on her jumper.

The Doctor sits down next to her, digging around in his pockets. He pulls out two muffins, and hands one to her. She looks at it suspiciously, then puts it down on the table.

"Doctor." She nudges his shoulder.

"Mmm?"

"Is she an alien?" Whispering, nodding surreptitiously towards the old lady.

"Her? No. I can’t imagine so. I told you, Clara. There’s no aliens here. I promise."

"You aren’t lying," she realizes. "We are actually just here to play Bingo. Why? Doctor, what-"

"It’s boring. It’s a boring, everyday place for boring, every day people. No one could dream this, Clara, not with this level of pointless detail. Have you looked around? Really looked, I mean. The paint’s peeling, over another layer of paint that’s peeling, over a really, atrociously ugly wallpaper. Someone’s written a rude word above the doorway, see? There’s been a leak in the ceiling recently. These books, right, they say ‘Bingo’, they’ve got numbers on, there’s a little company logo. There’s a factory somewhere making these things. It’s someone’s job to make these, that’s what they do for a living, every day they go into work and they punch the clock and they stand beside an assembly line making sure all the Bingo tickets are made correctly. Now. Would you dream that? Would your subconscious make the effort to imagine a chair that’s not quite level?" He rocks back and forth in demonstration, chair leg clacking against the linoleum.

"I suppose not."

"Taste, that’s another thing dreams forget about. Try the muffin."

She tries the muffin. “S’awful,” she mumbles, around a mouthful of dry crumbs.

"It’s revolting," he says, grinning triumphantly. "It’s catastrophically bad. Frankly I’m a little impressed at how bad it is. It takes real effort to sink to that sort of depth. And smell, hey, smell is another thing dreams always muck up. What do you smell?"

"Camphor," she says, choking down the bite of muffin. "Lavender."

"Cabbage," he adds. "Also, old mops."

"Regret. Desperation." She wrinkles her nose. "Burnt popcorn."

"Touch, that’s another one." He reaches out hesitantly, puts his hand over hers where it rests on top of her Bingo marker.

"I’ve held hands in dreams before."

"Not like this. It’s not your idea of what a held hand feels like. It’s not an approximation of touch. It’s my hand, your hand…" He trails off, voice gone low and raspy. He clears his throat. "So tell me. What do you feel?"

"Your hand."

"Specifically."

She closes her eyes, concentrates. “Your ring. Dry skin - you should moisturize. Callouses. Um. Something else, warm but not temperature-warm? Does that make sense?”

He snatches his hand away abruptly. “Right. Well. No need to go into that particular - thing. It’s a Time Lord thing, totally normal. The point is, Clara, in a dream, you wouldn’t have bothered to invent the details, the imperfections, the sensation you don’t even know what it is. And, probably, in a dream I wouldn’t have flinched like that.” He gives her a wry smile. “Do you need any more convincing, or can we get back to the very serious business of trouncing these old biddies in Bingo?”

She grins and blinks away tears. She isn’t crying, it’s just there’s a lot of dust in the air. And the perfume, those vast clouds of cheap perfume. “Oh,” she says shakily. “Only if you can handle me beating you. I have amazing luck.”

He laughs.

"12," the caller yells.

"See?" Clara asks, marking the number off on her ticket. "I’m winning already."


End file.
